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A comment on Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Break Away. Parent comment

Re:Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Bre... by adrianratnapala on Monday January 08, 2018 @03:03PM (#16099856)
Pay as much as we can sustainably demand, given the political realities of this time and place.

And you are right, that is exactly what all tax authorities do. It's important to get those political realities right.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Bre... by notfromhere on Monday January 08, 2018 @03:17PM (#16100011)
tax authorities tax based on income or value at set percentages. cartels pretty much extract what they can arbitrarily.
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Re:Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Bre... by philipodonnell on Monday January 08, 2018 @03:48PM (#16100365)
That made me chuckle. At least as far as the US tax code goes, our decisions about who gets taxed what amounts are just as arbitrary, we just publish the amounts further ahead of time than the mafia tax collectors.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Bre... by notfromhere on Monday January 08, 2018 @05:25PM (#16101346)
except, you know, the mafia doesn't use the money to build bridges and fund social programs.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Bre... by adventured on Monday January 08, 2018 @05:56PM (#16101652)
Funny enough, almost all forms of the mafia in fact do social works projects. Their scale has historically not been large enough to build bridges though, however they almost all fund social programs to one degree or another.

The Italian Mafia both in NY and Italy have done that. Escobar did it. Al Capone did it. Etc. One can certainly debate their reasoning for doing it of course (eg buying goodwill so they can continue their crime spree, set up an underdog appeal and so on).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Bre... by ptaipale on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @01:04AM (#16103973)
True. Even terror organisations like Daesh (ISIS) or Hamas use social programs to justify what they do and attract supporters.
[ Parent | on HN ]